Selected Courses
English 8300: Art Writing and the Creative
Designed for students in the Creative Writing Graduate Certificate program at Fitchburg State University, Art Writing and the Creative is a look into theories of creativity and contemporary arts writing—from arts criticism and journalism to ekphrastic poetry and nonfiction to interviews, letters, and biography. Students are invited to participate in considering how fresh understandings of creative and studio thinking can be applied to the practice of creative and critical writing. Writers, artists, creatives, journalists, and teachers may all find this course of potential value. Art writing is the construction of original works of literary and critical value on various art forms. Analysis, interpretation, evaluation, observation, and storytelling can all play a part in art writing. This kind of writing conveys experiences and perspectives for readers across genres. And, while not all art writing is art itself, some works are.
English 8350: Creative Writing as Experience
Reading, writing, thinking, feeling, sensing, becoming. Designed for students in the Creative Writing Graduate Certificate program, Creative Writing as Experience explores contemporary learning and teaching across the genres of creative writing. Part of a series of creative writing pedagogy courses that may be taken non-sequentially in the Creative Writing Graduate Certificate program at Fitchburg State University, the particular focus of this course is the actions and experience of participating in creative writing, the field, and its discourses. What does active engagement as a creative writer (and creative writing teacher) look like? What are the habits of mind of creative writing? How can creative writing learning be made visible? Readings feature diverse perspectives on teaching imaginative writing by engaging in creatively constructive and critically responsive and inclusive approaches.
English 9057: Exploring Creative Writing Pedagogies
Designed for students in the Creative Writing Graduate Certificate program at Fitchburg State University, Exploring Creative Writing Pedagogies is a look into contemporary learning and teaching across the genres of creative writing.
Creative writing is the construction of original works of imaginative literature. This kind of writing creates worlds for readers across genres—poetry, fiction, nonfiction, drama, and remixes thereof. Creative writers delve into artful interpretations of what language, images, scenes, structures, and narrative can express. Written works of art are a means of rendering representations of our experiences and perspectives.
Pedagogy—the art and science of how we teach—holds creative capacity as well. The educational philosopher and teacher Maxine Greene wrote, “Pondering pedagogy, I think of becoming—teachers becoming, learners becoming. And, yes, I think of making and perceiving works of art, actions that are always incomplete. Certainties, fixities, final solutions; they are yearned for much of the time.”
Whether you have taught in a formal classroom before or you teach in contexts otherwise, you are invited to consider your own becoming and to reflect on the possibilities and potentials of drawing out learners’ ideas and expressions within the literary arts. This course presupposes we each may draw up a chair to join conversations on what makes for good teaching and learning.